Lawsuits have already alleged structural failures on the tower caused the deadly fire

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PG&E transmission towers, including the one at right that reportedly malfunctioned minutes before the Camp Fire was first reported above Poe Dam, stand on a ridge above Pulga, Calif., Thursday, Dec. 6, 2018. Investigators have taken equipment from the tower as evidence. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)

SAN FRANCISCO — Pacific Gas and Electric has told state regulators that it found damage — a broken hook that supports high voltage wires — and “wear” on a nearly 100-year old transmission tower where the devastating Camp Fire started in the early morning of Nov. 8.

“A suspension insulator supporting a transposition jumper had separated from an arm on the tower,” PG&E stated in a letter sent to the California Public Utilities Commission Tuesday night. A “C hook” used to support the insulator broke away and “wear was found at the connection point.”

PG&E previously notified the PUC that the transmission tower, located high on a ridge along the North Fork of the Feather River, had malfunctioned about 15 minutes before the blaze was first reported, but the utility’s latest filing provides details of why the equipment failed.

A lawyer suing the utility said the admission shows that a lack of proper maintenance is to blame for the fire that killed 86 people, destroyed the town of Paradise and burned nearly 19,000 structures. It was the most destructive blaze in state history.

“The only explanation for why the equipment failed on the 100-year-old transmission tower was that PG&E had not properly inspected and maintained it to ensure that it was safe,” said Mike Danko, who is representing more than 400 plaintiffs suing the utility in San Francisco.

Nearly 20 separate lawsuits have been filed over the fire, most in Butte County, with more expected.

Danko said the tower was designed to withstand the wind speed of about 50 mph reported around the time of the fire. In 2012, five towers to the west and on the same Caribou-Palermo transmission line, collapsed during a winter storm with winds as high as 55 mph. Those towers were replaced in 2016.

“High voltage transmission lines, when properly inspected and maintained, are supposed to be able to easily withstand wind like we had on November 8th,” he said.

A PG&E spokesperson said the utility would not comment beyond what was in the letter.

Cal Fire has not released a cause of the fire, but this news organization reported last week that Cal Fire investigators had homed in on the tower in a rugged area near the tiny town of Pulga and the Poe Dam in the Feather River Canyon, collecting parts of the structure — identified as :27/222 in the report — for evidence.

The letter, sent late Tuesday night by PG&E Senior Director of Regulatory Relations Meredith Allen to Elizaveta Malashenko of the PUC’s Safety Enforcement Division, says the utility assisted Cal Fire with the collection of evidence from the tower while PUC staff observed.

PG&E also reported to the PUC that it found slight damage to a neighboring tower where an anchor that held down an insulator had become disconnected. Neither tower has been repaired, and the lines they support remain out of service.

The letter also discussed an investigation into a second ignition point on a rural road a few miles from Pulga near the Concow Reservoir, where a tree apparently fell into a wooden electric pole, knocking it down. The area was badly burned with few trees left standing.

PG&E said it found that “the pole and other equipment was on the ground with bullets and bullet holes at the break point of the pole and on the equipment.” It was not clear Wednesday how or if the bullet holes contributed to the pole’s collapse or how old they are.

A PG&E employee who first reached the area after the fire was out “observed several snapped trees, with some on top of the downed wires,” the letter states.

It was also a PG&E employee who first reported the fire to 9-1-1, the letter said.

The call came in at 6:25 a.m. from the Rock Creek Powerhouse facility, about nine miles north of Poe Dam on Highway 70. “Just got a report of a fire off Poe Dam on Highway 70,” the unidentified worker told an emergency dispatcher, according to a recording KTVU posted Wednesday. “Yeah, on the railroad tracks. Under the transmission line.”

More calls quickly came in, with one man telling the dispatcher: “I just want to give you a heads up, the winds are really whipping.”